"Grim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tried to give us an argument, and we discarnated the lot of them. Then we came down here, crying Assassins' Truce. One of the Starpha Assassins, Kirzol, was still carnate; he told us what had been going on." The President-General's face-became grim. "You know, I take a rather poor view of Prince Jirzyn's procedure in this matter, not to mention that of his underlings. I'll have to speak to him about this. Now, how about you and the Lady Dallona? What do ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... were wounded had been placed under the doctor's care, and all those now present were orderly and service-like. With a very few exceptions, they were all sailors, a few having already served in a king's ship. The first lieutenant, who inspected us, was a grim, gray-headed man past the prime of life, with features hardened by disappointment and long service, but who still retained an expression of kindliness and good-nature. His duty he dispatched with ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... The grim white sea-fog o'er him throws Its clammy curtain, damp and cold; He minds it not—his work he knows, 'T is but to fill ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Away, Grim Phantom! Scorpion King, away! Reserve thy terrors and thy stings display For coward Wealth and Guilt in robes of State! Lo! by the grave I stand of one, for whom 10 A prodigal Nature and a niggard Doom (That all bestowing, this withholding all) Made each chance knell ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... all Who thronged the prison's stony hall, The rulers or the slaves of law, 920 Felt with a new surprise and awe That they were human, till strong shame Made them again become the same. The prison blood-hounds, huge and grim, From human looks the infection caught, 925 And fondly crouched and fawned on him; And men have heard the prisoners say, Who in their rotting dungeons lay, That from that hour, throughout one day, The fierce despair and hate which kept 930 Their trampled bosoms ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... whom these carriages belong may be seen in the distance squatting down on rugs spread out beneath the trees, and sipping coffee or sherbert while listening to musicians or story-tellers. You stroll toward them as near as their attendant guardians—grim-looking black eunuchs armed to the teeth, and quite ready to use those arms with very little provocation on the persons of any "dogs of infidels" who may interfere or seem to interfere with their fair charges—will permit. You see bundles of the gayest colored silks worn ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... the forces that were at work. Huge blocks of ice, weighing many tons, were lifted into the air and tossed aside as other masses rose beneath them. We were helpless intruders in a strange world, our lives dependent upon the play of grim elementary forces that made a mock of our puny efforts. I scarcely dared hope now that the 'Endurance' would live, and throughout that anxious day I reviewed again the plans made long before for the sledging journey that we must make in the event of our ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... districts through which he was to pass for his arrival. While Euphormio is on the horseblock in the act of mounting his steed, a rustic brings him a letter from Fibullius, and in conversation gives him such an account of his bride as forces upon him the reflection, that even the grim Libitina would be preferable, as a bride, to so confirmed a Thais, so fruitful a partner, as the protegee of Fibullius would be likely to prove. But, as these notes have, in spite of all my attempts at condensation, already grown to a most formidable size, I will ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 2, November 10 1849 • Various
... happened to the man? She did not for a moment think that he could be dead; on the contrary, she pictured him alive and still more insane than the night before, still more desperate in his mind, still more darkly pursued by the grim phantom of revenge. Was Andy now so really insane that he had even forgotten his appointment with Nora? This was probably the case. But although the man was too insane to think of meeting the girl, he was probably not at all too ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... times and in various dialects. It was an ideal city for a warrior to take his rest in; but probably what counted most with Captain Borrow was the Grammar School—more than the Norman Cathedral, the grim old Castle that stands guardian-like upon its mound, the fact of its being a garrison town, or even the traditions that surrounded the place. He had two sons who must be appropriately sent out into the world, and Norwich offered facilities for educating both. He accordingly ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Raven's pressing invitation to stay to lunch, he took himself off, and my host, his niece, and myself continued our investigations. These lasted until the lunch hour—they afforded us abundant scope for conversation, too, and kept us from any reference to the grim tragedy of the ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... I ever had in the world. Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the midst of the crowd, which made way for me as if it knew what I came for, I stood up in my gig, took off my hat, and shouted, "God Almighty bless you, Jack!" The dying man turned his pale grim face towards me—for his face was always somewhat grim, do you see—nodded and said, or I thought I heard him say, "All right, old chap." The next moment . . . my eyes water. He had a high heart, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... do all I can to pacify Totantora," said Ruth, and she really was somewhat anxious on this point, for the grim countenance of the Indian chief ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... Anglo-Scots, sustaining with unexampled heroism repeated defeats and blighted hopes, driven from one mountainous district by the fierce opposition of its inhabitants, from another by a cessation of supplies, till famine absolutely threatened, closely followed by its grim attendant, disease, all his efforts to collect and inspire his countrymen with his own spirit, his own hope, were utterly and entirely fruitless, for his enemies appeared to increase around him, the autumn found him as far, if not further, from the successful termination of his desires ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... soldiers, some with camp equipments, and all hinting of the enormous resources the fatuous Kaiser had let loose upon himself in this far-off land. On other highways the weapons and materials of war were converging toward the great seaports in the same way. The silent, grim, processions—how impressive they were! ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... sin of many, and maketh intercession for the transgressors.' The former of these two clauses brings up the pathetic picture of the scapegoat who 'bore upon him all their iniquities into a solitary land.' The Servant conquers hearts because He bears upon Him the grim burden which a mightier hand than Aaron's has made to meet on His head, and because He bears it away. The ancient ceremony, and the prophet's transference of the words describing it to his picture of the Servant who was to be King, floated before John the Baptist, when he pointed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... we are treading sacred earth! But for that old man, I had passed along this path without a thrill. Had I not but an hour ago stood upon this very common, vainly, so it seemed, invoking the spirits of passion and romance, and the grim old common had never made a sign. And now I stood in the very dingle where they had so often and so wildly met; and it was all gone, quite gone away for ever. The hours that had seemed so real, the kisses that had seemed like to last for ever, the vows, the tears, all now ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... on their ponies will hang on like grim death and mighty glad I'll be when the trees on the first slopes reach out their boughs to hide us. About ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... candle and approached the bed. The old man's face was turned to the pillow; but he lay so still, and his breathing was so inaudible, that his sleep might well, by that hasty, shrinking, guilty glance, be mistaken for the repose of death. The new-comer drew back, and a grim smile passed over his face: he replaced the candle on the table, opened the bureau with a key which he took from his pocket, and loaded himself with several rouleaus of gold that he found in the drawers. At this time the old man began to wake. He stirred, he looked ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... fleet under Rojestvensky sailed to Madagascar, welcome to whatever aid the French ally could bestow. Japan said nothing, but made a note of it. She cleaned and scraped her sea-worn, battle-scarred vessels, under the supervision of grim, silent Togo. Oyama, the Japanese commander-in-chief, reenforced by the veterans of Kuroki and Nogi, was playing with Kuropatkin until he had the game in his hand. After (p. 282) ten days of hard fighting, the discomfited Russians made a masterly retreat to the Sha river, after evacuating ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... to London. Clearly there remained no communications of any sort between them. It was not at all on her account, he assured himself, that he had turned against Plowden. But what other reason could there be? He observed his visitor's perturbed and dejected mien with a grim kind of satisfaction—but still he could not ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... even of the proud, shy girl who walked on his left hand, and whose attitude impressed him as slightly antagonistic. They soon reached the church, a very ancient one, built in the bloody days of the Plantagenets by the two knights whose grim effigies kept guard within the porch. It was dim and still when they entered: the congregation all kneeling at the solemn confession; the clergyman's voice, low and pathetic, intensifying silence to which it only added mortal minors of lament and entreaty. He was ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... dollars were slipping through their ready hands, and still there was no hesitation, no weakening. Until the small fry had dropped out the deal had been confused; it was too big, there were too many interests involved, to make possible a clear understanding, but now it was settling down into a grim fight between the biggest men on the Board. The Clique were buying wheat—Page & Company were selling it to them: if it should come out, on the thirty-first of December, that Page & Company had sold more than they could deliver, the Clique would ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... of the girl, and endeavored to draw her into conversation to the exclusion of the motorman. She responded, twisting her body and face towards him, so that her sweet and ingratiating smiles could not be seen by the motorman. Then, she reversed the process and gave a few fleeting smiles to the grim-looking motorman. It was as clear a ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... was Miss Violet Higglesby-Browne, I saw a grim, bony, stocky shape, in a companion costume to my aunt's. Around the edges of her cork helmet her short iron-gray hair visibly bristled. She had a massive head, and a seamed and rugged countenance which did its best to live down the humiliation of a ridiculous little nose with no bridge. ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... chemist who would use against me the latest scientific implements of criminal warfare. It is, therefore, to the extraordinary means used for my detection that I impute my defeat, rather than to any bungling of my own. This is a grim consolation, but it is still a consolation, for I have always prided myself upon being an artist in my line. As I propose to put myself beyond the reach of further cross-examination, I take this opportunity to make a last statement of such things as I care to have known. After this is ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... Skinner, until the fellow began to think himself an object of more than common attention. His satisfaction at this distinction was somewhat heightened, at observing a smile on the face of the captain, which, although it might be thought grim, certainly denoted satisfaction. This pantomime occupied the time they were passing a hollow, and concluded as they rose another hill. Here the captain and his sergeant both dismounted, and ordered the party ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... a kind of a grass widow, Mrs. Plosell, had attracted Gus Carline, and when he came home from her house, he was always drunk. When Nelia remonstrated, he was ugly. He had thrown her down and gone back to the grass widow's the night before. Nelia considered that grim fact, and, having made up ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... just settled down like a sitting hen—just the leastest list to starboard; but a man could stand there easy. They had rigged up ropes across her, from bulwark to bulwark, an' beside these the men were mustered, holding on like grim death whenever the sea made a clean breach over them, an' standing up like heroes as soon as it passed. The captain an' the officers were clinging to the rail of the quarter-deck, all in their golden uniforms, ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ladies and gentlemen who were taking the waters began to assemble. We were applauded for our determination, in spite of our grim look. The Louis were on the table; I had lost a hundred, and yet the game was going in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... not have to tell you any more than Madeline." Seeing the grim look on Norris' face, Dick went on, "Let's go in and to bed. We seem to rub each other the wrong way to-night. If we don't separate soon we shall be having a ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... left the house. 'What can I do for him? I have to go to the expense of a barber, I'm so shattered! How can I send anybody coins? It's hard lines, I daresay; but does he think I'm living on hot muffins? One comfort,' was his grim reflection, 'he can't cut and run—he's got to stay; he's as helpless as the dead.' And then he broke forth again: 'Complains, does he? and he's never even heard of Bent Pitman! If he had what I have on my mind, he might complain with a ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... man, with shaking hands, took from under his coat the heavy article that had sagged his pocket. It was a black, old-fashioned, seven-chambered revolver, well oiled and as grim-looking as a rifled cannon on a battleship. He produced three greased cartridges, broke the weapon, inserted the cartridges, then closed it and spun the cylinder. It was not an unfamiliar weapon, this. Its mere grim appearance, stuck ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... contemptible on my part to speak thus frivolously of events which will stand out in such golden letters so long as America has a history, but I wanted to illustrate the yearning for sympathy which I felt. You who were among people grim and self-contained usually, who, I trust, were falling on each other's necks in the public streets, shouting, with tears in their eyes and triumph in their hearts, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... well as their own? And if Othello had taken Corneille's Pauline to wife and not Desdemona, would Desdemona's destiny then, all else remaining unchanged, have dared to come within reach of the enlightened love of Pauline? Where was it, in body or soul, that grim fatality lurked? And though the body may often be powerless to add to its strength, can this ever be true of the soul? Indeed, the more that we think of it, the clearer does it become that there could be one destiny only that might truly ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... "Deism," "Spiritualism"; and though one by one he runs them through, yet he never quite slays the Evil One;—the severed limbs unite again, and a new monster takes the old one's place. It is serious men who make up the Church Militant,—grim, earnest, valiant. If mustered in the ninth century, there had been no better soldiers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... the other side was a thick-set, middle-aged man, uncouth in manners, and ugly where none were handsome, with a dark, roughly hewn visage, that looked grim in repose, and seemed to hold within itself the machinery of a very terrific frown. He ate with resolute appetite, and let slip few opportunities of imbibing whatever liquids happened to be passing by. I was meditating in what way this grisly-featured table-fellow might most safely be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... from any other man; I learned from him that a man's own evil is to him the worst thing there is or ever could be, and that an evil so unbalances all men's minds that they always seek for extremes in that small grim shop. A woman that had no children had exchanged with an impoverished half-maddened creature with twelve. On one occasion a man had exchanged ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... except those the fields and pastures kindly spread before her admiring eyes. Old Mrs. Thacher had been brought up to consider the hard work of this life, and though she had taken her share of enjoyment as she went along, it was of a somewhat grim and sober sort. She believed that a certain amount of friskiness was as necessary to young human beings as it is to colts, but later both must be harnessed and made to work. As for pleasure itself she had little notion of that. She liked fair weather, and certain flowers were ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and restored, in less than an hour Smith found himself fast bound to a tree, while grim warriors, terribly painted, danced around him, bows and arrows in hand. They were about to slay him when the chief, holding up the compass, bade them lay down their weapons. Such a medicine man, he had decided, must not thus be slain. So ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... little bridge, she held with one hand to the worn old rope by means of which she presently would pull it up. She did not take Joe very seriously; in the darkness she could not see the grim expression of his brow, the firm set of his jaw, the clenched hands, one of which was pressed against the game sack with his powerful plunder hidden in it. She laughed and tried to joke, for, even though she did not guess how serious he was, her heart had told her that some day, ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... and hunger, and the weariness of toil, and the sweets of rest, and who come under the general law, "increase and multiply," promulgated of old to them, stands less firmly than the immaterial spirits stood of old; and yet even they rebelled against Heaven, and fell. There awakes a grim hope in the sullen lord of the first revolt. Ages beyond tale or reckoning has this temple of creation been in building. Long have its mute prophecies in fishes and in creeping things, in bird and in beast, told of coming man, its final object ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... of thirteen, his uncle—for the poor fellow was an orphan— asked him one day what he would like to be. This was an extraordinary condescension on the part of Mr Allfrey, senior, who was a grim, hard-featured man, with little or no soul to speak of, and with an enormously large ill-favoured body. The boy, although taken by surprise—for his uncle seldom addressed him on any subject,—answered promptly, "I'd like to ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... statue of John Knox, grim and strong, stands with its arm uplifted, as if shaking his fist at the old cathedral which in life he vainly endeavored to ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... knew what they say of me indoors.' He made a motion of his head towards the windows of the old wing—'"Harmless," they say, "quite harmless. Let him alone, he's harmless." A tiger with his claws cut and his teeth drawn—an old, grey-bearded tiger, ghastly and grim, but harmless—a cobra with the poison-bag plucked out of his jaw! The venom grows again, child—the snake's venom—but youth never comes back: ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... again of a people is telling; Of the life that they live there, so haggard and grim, That if we and our love amidst them had been dwelling My fondness had faltered, thy beauty ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... The duel continues. What grim determination, what perseverance can these Bohemians put into a mad jest! I find myself thinking how much better it would be were they to apply to their Art the same earnestness and fixity of purpose which they squander on ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... he reappeared among them his eye was almost grim, but nobody noticed his eye. They were looking at watches, and Johnson was being omniscient about trains. They seemed to discover Mr. Polly afresh just at the moment of parting, and said a number of more or less appropriate things. But Uncle Pentstemon was far too worried about ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... Grim Death in his shroud swatheth mortals each hour, Yet little we reck of what's hanging us o'er; O would on the world that ye laid not such stress, That its baubles ye lov'd not, so gaudy and poor; O where are the ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... American. But how, without revealing to her what he hid, could he be certain that she understood this? He wondered if it had not been a great mistake to let her go to Mrs. Vanderlyn, and then laughed bitterly because he had not "let" her go; a grim necessity had forced it—it, or something else which might have been ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... small portion of non-OECD countries have succeeded in rapidly adjusting to these technological forces; the accelerated development of new industrial (and agricultural) technology is complicating already grim environmental problems ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... league of the ancient town of N—-, the capital of one of the eastern counties. The terrible Thurtell was present, lord of the concourse; for wherever he moved he was master, and whenever he spoke, even when in chains, every other voice was silent. He stood on the mead, grim and pale as usual, with his bruisers around. He it was, indeed, who got up the fight, as he had previously done with respect to twenty others; it being his frequent boast that he had first introduced bruising and bloodshed amidst rural scenes, and transformed a quiet ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... your huskies up the river, Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize? Have you marked the map's void spaces, mingled with the mongrel races, Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew? And though grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off with curses? Then hearken ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... be recalled in such a tumult of joy. As we passed down the bay, the gallant defenders of those works around Charleston, the names of which have become immortal, stood upon the parapets and cheered to us, and we answered like men who were hailing for life. The huge guns, which lay like so many grim watch dogs around the city, thundered a welcome, the people of the heroic city crowded to the wharves to receive us. If anything could repay us for the wretchedness of long imprisonment and our forced separation from ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... of Warwick remained all the time in his castle. He had already taken his share in the cruel act of treachery. It was, however, important that Lancaster should take the responsibility for the deed. Four cobblers of Warwick piously bore the headless corpse within their town. But the grim earl sent it back, because it was not found on his fee. At last some Oxford Dominicans took charge of the body and deposited it temporarily in their convent, not daring to inter it in holy ground, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... not, though we drew a little aback from the surf and let fall our gown-hems. But the crew of that boat beached her close to where we stood, and came hastily wading the surf towards us; and we saw that they were twelve weaponed men, great, and grim, and all clad in black raiment. Then indeed were we afraid, and we turned about and fled up the beach; but now it was too late, for the tide was at more than half ebb and long was the way over the sand to the place where we had left our horses tied among the tamarisk-bushes. Nevertheless ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... amusement of the Opposition continued. Something, however, in his grim steadiness began to impress his own party as the other, while from more than one quarter of the House there came a murmur of sympathy. His courage, his stone-cold strength, the disdain which was coming into his voice, impressed them, apart from his argument or its ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to get up at five o'clock next morning, just the same, and dreams became grim realities when he found himself in the saddle again and off for a day's work before six. A heavy thunderstorm in the night had made everything fresh and shining, but at the same time the water on the underbrush soaked Wilbur through and through when he went out to wrangle the horses. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... comforted the dying, he buried the dead when even relatives shrank from the duty, and by strong disinfectants he sought to clean the huts and tents of the poisonous germs. There was no glamour of war to lure him on, no crashing of music, no cheers of comrades, for he was alone. It was just a grim, determined, silent fight, in which he knew he might fall at any moment himself, and there was no one to tell of deeds that were worthy of the Victoria Cross. But he fought the plagues to a finish. And it is good to know ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... whispered, for some moments, into the ear of the hideous creature who had made way for the Veiled Woman. The grim skeleton bowed his head submissively, and strode noiselessly away through the long grasses—the slender stems, trampled under his stealthy feet, relifting themselves as after a passing wind. And thus he, too, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... day the columns of the press recorded new failures, and every failure added to the directory of John Sherman's maledictors. But the man persevered. And now, looking back over the record of those two years, with all their stifled ambitions and ruined hopes, the grim resolution with which John, deafening his ears to the cry of distress from every quarter, kept his eye fixed upon the single object of his endeavor, seems hardly human—certainly not humane. And yet there are few reasoning men to be found now ready ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... their gaze. The shining of his newly-washed hair was a glory crown upon his head. They saw him gathered into another world than any they knew. It could have seemed no worse to them if the far heaven above the narrow city streets had opened its grim clouds and received their comrade from their sight. They were appalled. How could he ever be theirs again? How could it all have happened in the few short hours since Mikky flashed past them and fell a martyr ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... did not bring with them the prerogatives of a national establishment, but were in a position of dissent from the existing establishments. "It grieved them that Church of England men should be stigmatized with the grim and horrid title of dissenters" ("The Making of Pennsylvania," p. 192). One of the most pathetically amusing instances of the misfit of the Englishman in America is that of the Rev. Mr. Poyer at Jamaica, L. I. The meeting-house and glebe-lands that ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Gregorios, with a grim smile. "But we will not stick at trifles so long as we have the imperial Irade with us. I hear the carriage. Let ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... said. She had left him no loophole. She had the air of a young woman who knew her own mind excellently well. A single word from her to Thomson and the whole superstructure of his ingeniously built-up life might tumble to pieces. He sat with folded arms in a grim attitude of unrest, thinking bitter thoughts. They rolled into his brain like black shadows. He had been honest in the first instance. With ancestors from both countries, he had deliberately chosen the country to which he felt the greatest attachment. He remembered his ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sister, with a kitten's pretty but unimportant likes, dislikes, habits, occupations, and aspirations. To regard her as being under the shadow of a woman's tragedy had never entered her head. The kitten playing Antigone, Ophelia, or such like distressed heroines, in awful, grim earnest is not a conception that readily occurs even to the most affectionate and imaginative of kitten owners. Zora accepted Emmy's explanation of her petulance with a spirit entirely unperturbed, and resumed ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... through her sympathetic pages—to be made more and more miserable by her—were my only comforts. I felt as if I had been living in a palace of cards, which had tumbled down, leaving only Miss Mills and me among the ruins; I felt as if some grim enchanter had drawn a magic circle round the innocent goddess of my heart, which nothing indeed but those same strong pinions, capable of carrying so many people over so much, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... with the double-door and the rest of the fixtures. A melancholy relic of past glories! I crossed over to the other side of the road, and passed my eye over the whole ruin. The roof, the ceilings, most of the inner walls, had already fallen. Little remained but the grim, familiar facade—a thin husk. I noted (that which I had never noted before) two iron grills in the masonry. Miserable travesties of usefulness, ventilating the open air! Through the gaping windows, against the wall ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... they are at work, of course. They'll work in their own way. And," continued Mr. Halfpenny, with a grim chuckle, "you can be certain of this much, Tertius—having heard what we were able to tell them, having seen what we were able to put before them, with respect to the doings of that eventful night, they won't let Master ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... oblige you—except this, and this I really can't do. Forgive me.' Such amenities would possibly have eased the cord which was about to snap; but the idea of regarding Edward's condition as a factor in the case did not suggest itself favourably to the grim Beechinor stock, so stern, harsh, and rude. The sick man wiped from his sunken features the sweat which continually gathered there. Then he turned upon his ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... I had deprived thee of a parting nod of my lord; but I have moved him to leave thee a better remembrance for thy faithful service. See here! a purse of as good gold as ever chinked under a miser's thumb and fore-finger. Ay, count them, lad," said he, as Foster received the gold with a grim smile, "and add to them the goodly remembrance he gave ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... into this," said the Home Secretary, not without appreciation of the grim humor of the situation as he glanced at Grodman's ashen cheeks, "I have reprieved the prisoner. Mr. Templeton was about to dispatch the messenger to the governor of Newgate as you entered this room. Mr. Wimp's card-castle would have tumbled to pieces without your assistance. Your still undiscoverable ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... those novelists who have left memorable presentments of Irish life. It is a pity; for plainly, if the man had cared less for sensational incident and ingenious construction, he might have sketched life and character with a strong brush and a kind of grim realism. ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... how it is that some jesting word, trivial and purposeless it may be, will fire a hidden train of thought which was waiting only for some chance spark? "Obliterate the judge," said Hunnicott in grim jest; and straightway Kent saw possibilities; saw a thing to be done, though not yet ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... on, in a sort of panic, till he was a hundred yards away. Then he stopped suddenly, lowering his head, and his hapless rider was thrown over it, landing some distance in advance. Solomon looked at him with grim humor, if a donkey is capable of such a feeling, and, apparently satisfied, turned and walked complacently back ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... do that. Only you've got to stick to that story like grim death—no making any little break about climbing the mountain top and things ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... too, more suddenly and noisily than the humour of the joke seemed quite to call for, and glanced a grim look from the corners of his eyes on Lake, but the gallant captain did not seem to perceive it; and after a few seconds more he handed it very innocently back to Mrs. Dorothy, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... turned his head so far as he was able; a grim smile bristled the hairs about his lips, and twinkled in his eyes. What did he object to? Why—everything! Object to! That sleek head, those puppy-dog eyes, fattish red cheeks, high collars, pearl pin, spats, and drawl-pah! the imbecility, the smugness of his mug; no go, no devil in any of his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... round as the little procession passed out into a kind of hall whose floor was covered with Eastern rugs, and in which were grouped about some fifty armed men, who showed plenty of grim signs of having been in a serious fray. Then onward through a couple of rooms handsomely draped with curtains which gave them the appearance of tents, and into a much larger apartment, upon a broad divan in which, dimly shown by a couple of brass lamps, lay ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... whose lives were cut short by the Grim Reaper when they were at the height of their development as trained soldiers, all cherished thoughts of getting back home. They gave expression to such thoughts ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... the age of the greatest predominance of Calvinism. In religion he was scarcely a Calvinist, indeed he laboured under a suspicion of atheism: but his philosophy is accurately cast in the mould of the grim theology of Geneva. We may call it the philosophy of Calvinism. It has for its central tenet, that human nature either was from the first, or is become, bad, "desperately wicked," depraved, corrupt, and utterly abominable, so that whatever is natural to ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... Captain Lorrimer's saloon and swept down the street, first a dusty figure on a dusty horse, hardly visible; then a spot of red which must be Harry Fisher on his blood-bay, with a long-striding sorrel beside him that could carry no one except grim old Sliver Waldron. Behind these rode one with the light glinting on his silver conchos—Mat Henshaw, the town Beau Brummel—then the black Guss Reeve, and last of all "Ronicky" Joe on his pinto; "Ronicky" Joe, handy man at all things, and particularly ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... many," was the grim answer, which explained why the Zuni had probably not gone in pursuit. "They ride like ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... fauteuil, thought out the queer circumstance that had visited her to-night; never noticing how fast time flitted by, never heeding the stillness of advancing night, until Mr. Rayne's late arrival roused her from her reverie, and brought her suddenly back from the sunlight of her dreams to the grim darkness of the reality. Kissing him a sleepy good- night, Honor left the room, henceforth haunted by the spirits of her earliest conceptions of love, and went silently, almost gloomily, up to her ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... filed past them, grim-faced, silent. At the far end of the room, statistics in red inch-high type ran columnwise down the wall's length. She read, with a gasp in ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... Blackie and Boston, their rat-hearts steeled to courage by lust of gold, their rascally, seductive tongues welding into a dangerous unit the mob of desperate, broken stiffs who inhabited the foc'sle. There were Lynch and Fitzgibbon, the buckos, living up to their grim code; and the Knitting Swede, that prince of crimps, who put most of us into the ship. There was myself, with my childish vanity, and petty ambitions. There was the lady, the beautiful, despairing lady aft, wife of the infamous ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... And timely rest have wanted. But, fair virgin, This will restore all soon. LADY. 'T will not, false traitor! 'T will not restore the truth and honesty That thou hast banished from thy tongue with lies. Was this the cottage and the safe abode Thou told'st me of? What grim aspects are these, These oughly-headed monsters? Mercy guard me! Hence with thy brewed enchantments, foul deceiver! Hast thou betrayed my credulous innocence With vizored falsehood and base forgery? And would'st ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... a lesser and a less romantic sense of life and of the future, and more immersed in present circumstances. And certainly, for one thing, English boys are younger for their age. Sabbath observance makes a series of grim, and perhaps serviceable, pauses in the tenor of Scottish boyhood—days of great stillness and solitude for the rebellious mind, when in the dearth of books and play, and in the intervals of studying the Shorter ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a grim dark face with a week's growth of bristling black hair about it, and a dark moustache,—a strong lowering face, and a pair of keen black eyes that bored holes in one; that was Torode of Herm as I ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... Grim Fate was tender, contemplating you, And fairies brought their offerings at your birth; You take the rose-leaf pathway as your due, Your rightful meed the choicest ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... only had a head, but knew how to keep it. With a rein tightly clutched in each hand, with his feet firmly pressed against the footboard, with a sharp eye out over the mare's ears, and a grim twitch on his determined mouth, he went over the chances in ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... Gray was grim, mocking; some vibrant, evil quality to his voice suggested extreme malignity at full cock, like that unseen weapon the muzzle of which was buried beneath the driver's short ribs. "Ah! You go armed, I see. A shoulder holster, as I suspected. I knew you had nothing on this side." ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... have been convicted before, haven't you?"—"Yes, sir," answered the man; "but it was due to the incapacity of my counsel rather than to any fault on my part."—"It always is," said Lord Avory, with a grim smile, "and you have my sincere sympathy."—"And I deserve it," retorted the man, "seeing that you were my ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... Hake smiled in a grim fashion, and taking a short spear from one of his comrades, looked at Biarne, pointed ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... next she took the matter before a higher judge, and fervently, rigidly prayed. On the third night she pronounced her ultimatum. Kneeling by the tiny gable window of her grim little bedchamber, her face strained and intense, her big eyes fixed on a red, pulsing planet above ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... thing came as a deep and divine relief. In the satisfaction induced by it, he penned an obituary of Potts in which he employed the phrase "grim messenger of death" very cleverly indeed. For matters had been going from bad to worse. Murmurs at the demands of Mrs. Potts—likened by Asa Bundy to a daughter of the horse leech—had become passionately loud as our masses ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... revenge he had had, but there was a grim sort of satisfaction in lugging home the hide of ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... fail because of the lack of some insignificant thing—some item so common as to be taken for granted in all terrestrial shops, but impossible of fabrication with the means at his disposal. At such times he would set his grim jaw a trifle harder, go back one step farther toward the Stone Age, and begin all over again—to find the necessary raw material or a possible substitute, and then to build the apparatus and machinery necessary to produce the part he required. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... entered the cleared area in front of the house and stopped in a cloud of dust. Logan, grim-faced, followed by Billy and Jane walked across the yard to the car and waited. The door opened and a man in the uniform of an enlisted ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... with you if I could? What is to become of my old man in Italy, with his cursed asthma, and nobody to nurse him? Oh, but those were dull years in London! The black endless streets—the dreadful Sundays—the hundreds of thousands of people, always in a hurry; always with grim faces set on business, business, business! I was glad to go back and be married in Italy. And here I am in London again, after God knows how many years. No matter. We will enjoy ourselves to-day; and when we go to Madam Gallilee's to-morrow, ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... Of excremental humours, roused to strife By the operation of some ruinous change Wherever his evil mandate run and range Into a dire intensity of life, A craftsman at his bench, he settles down To the grim job of ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... think—seems to me that ain't in order," began the moderator, but Captain Cy rose to his feet. The grim smile had returned to his face and he looked at the joyous assemblage with almost his old expression of ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore— Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" ...
— Le Corbeau • Edgar Allan Poe
... eleventh hour Dmitrieff grasped the situation and applied to Ivanoff for reenforcements. Owing to some blunder the appeal never reached the Russian chief, and Dmitrieff had to do the best he could. Nothing now could save his small force from those grim lines of gaping muzzles turned against his positions. The overture began on April 28, 1915, with an advance on the Upper Biala toward Gorlice, by Von Mackensen's right. Here some minor attacks had been previously made, and the gradually increasing pressure did not at first reveal the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... many who, when they heard of Mr. Day's difficulties, said it served the "tight-fisted fellow" just right. And many who might better have remembered Uncle Jason's unfailing if somewhat grim neighborly kindness, whispered and smirked as they discussed the story in public. At the best, most of his friends proved to be of the I-told-you-so variety. When it became publicly known that Tom Hotchkiss had absconded ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... court between a little church and other buildings, a grim old woman in a coloured head-veil looked at me out of a doorway. I called to her that I had had an accident, and asked the favour of some washing-water and a bandage. She stared at me in doleful wise, ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... of grim determination came into his eyes. With the air of one who might have been quoting Keats, but ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... rope was the easiest part of the undertaking. Lennon reversed the crank of the windlass, around and around, with purposeful deliberation. He hoped that Slade would recover consciousness while still swinging in mid-air. There was grim pleasure in the thought of how the scoundrel would first become aware of the dim starlit precipice beside him and then would rouse to the shame and ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... omnibus conveyed me from the station to Albury Lodge, after depositing a grim-looking elderly lady at a house on the outskirts of the town, and a dapper-looking little man, whom I took for a commercial traveller, at an inn in the market-place. I watched the road with a kind of idle curiosity as the ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... easy to guess how, as the story came out, the king looked blacker and blacker, and more and more grim, until at last he was half fainting with rage and astonishment. This, then, was the baby he had left to die, after cruelly murdering his mother! Surely fate might have spared him this! He wished he had sufficient excuse to put the ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... their looks on him, and in grim anticipation enjoyed the penalty he was to pay, Imber looked at them, and mused on their ways, and on their Law that never slept, but went on unceasing, in good times and bad, in flood and famine, through trouble and terror and death, and which would go on unceasing, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... not see the reason for it all, but one thing was clear: she must not even now be allowed to take her own course. Whatever she was up to, she did not intend to let him know about it; ergo it was something inimical to him, either personally or officially. Probably personally, Kingozi thought with a grim smile. He was no fool about women when his mind was sufficiently disengaged from other things; and now he remembered the inhibited promise of the tropic moon. Still he could take no chances. He could turn back; he must turn ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... the savages, was no doubt coveted by both. It must be the hand of this woman that should cast the dice, a white one and a red one for each man, and he whose red die fell closer to the line was winner in the grim game of life ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... dead,—and the dead do not receive, Monsieur." She laughed, and told the tale of death circumstantially, with grim relish of detail. ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... Thames, the red hue of its iron superstructure, which in daylight only enhances the meanness of its appearance, at night invests it with a certain grim severity; the archway, with its bolted metal plates, its wire-woven cables, over-glimmered with the yellowness of the gas-lamps which it supports, might be the entrance to some fastness of ignoble misery. The road is narrow, and after nightfall ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... sufferings were concealed from the view of the world—and it was only from the few witnesses of the scene who afterwards lived to tell the cruelties they had endured, that our country became acquainted with their deplorable condition. The grim sentinels, faithful to their charge as the fiends of the nether world, barred the doors against the hand of charity, and godlike benevolence never entered there—compassion had fled from these mansions of despair, and pity wept over ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... become invulnerable, except in one place where a linden leaf touched his body. Siegfried marries Kriemhild, a beautiful Burgundian princess, and with her lives most happily. But a curse attached to the Nibelung treasure, and Siegfried's enemy, the "grim Hagen," treacherously slays him by a spear thrust in the one spot where he could be hurt. Many years afterwards Kriemhild marries Attila, king of the Huns, on condition that he help her to vengeance. Hagen and his Burgundians are invited to Hunland, where Kriemhild ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... He had read aright Squire Jonas' stupefaction, the watchmaker's ludicrous alarm. He now read aright the chill which the very sight of his altered mien—cheerful and sprightly where they had expected grim aloofness—had thrown upon the spirits of the ball players. Well, he could understand it all. The alteration in him, coming without prior warning, had startled them, frightened them, really. Well, that might have been expected. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the Asylum had an upper story added to one of the military buildings, with the result that there is the strange spectacle of a row of windowed chambers on the top of a buttressed and battlemented wall, windowless and grim. The upper story has been built into the battlements in such a manner that the outline of the battlements is still clearly visible, and the building is a composite reminder of old-time war and latter-day peace. The whole of the ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... tremendous thought, that the justice of an all-powerful God inflicts on the damned nothing but what they have fully deserved is the absorbing tremendous conviction which weighs down each heart. Vice appears in its own grim disgusting colours, being stripped of the mask under which it is hidden in this world, and the infernal viper is seen devouring those who have cherished or fostered it here below. In a word, Hell is the temple of anguish and despair, while the kingdom of God is the temple of peace and ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... wait, and then the horses; and the bishop mounted a great bay charger, managing him as a master. And to me was brought my white horse by the collier, looking a grim fighting man enough in his arms, and to Wulfhere and Wislac black and gray ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... played a grim little trick upon me. I was seated at luncheon in a Salvation Army building, when the door opened, and there entered as dreadful a human object as I have ever seen. The man was clad in tatters, his bleeding feet were bound up with filthy rags; he wore a dingy newspaper for ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... France, at Aix, in his Chapelle once more, That his right arm an evil bear did gnaw; Out of Ardennes he saw a leopard stalk, His body dear did savagely assault; But then there dashed a harrier from the hall, Leaping in the air he sped to Charles call, First the right ear of that grim bear he caught, And furiously the leopard next he fought. Of battle great the Franks then seemed to talk, Yet which might win they knew not, in his thought. Charles sleeps on, nor ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... morning, as a matter of fact, reflected the difference in their fighting and sea-going qualities. The Spanish fleet, a line of monsters, straggled, formless and shapeless, over miles of sea space, distracted with signals, fluttering with many-coloured flags. The English fleet, grim and silent, bore down upon the enemy in two compact and firm-drawn columns, ship following ship so closely and so exactly that bowsprit and stern almost touched, while an air-line drawn from the foremast of the leading ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... gazed at her flushed cheeks, and smoothed down the curls upon her neck. She was beautiful to him—too beautiful to die there in mid ocean, with none but rude men to shed great tears over her silent form. How he wished that Bertha was there, to watch over that frail little form, and ward off the grim tyrant that was struggling to possess it! She would not fear the pangs of the pestilence; she would be an angel in the little state-room, and bring down peace and hope, if not ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... the French say, "preside" at these establishments. But should not the Victorian apostles of abstinence go further? It is well to replace girls by men, and thus subdue the bar to masculine dullness; but could not the Act of Parliament go on to declare that none save plain, grim-visaged males should be tolerated as assistants? The most inveterate toper might hesitate to enter twice if he were always met by the ugly aspect of some dark, forbidding countenance. A kind of competition might take ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... To be occupying the most expensive suite in the hotel of a man who wished to lend him money, to be unable to pay one day's rent therefore, and yet to be stopped from accepting aid. There was a grim irony about it, for a fact. Then, too, the seed he had sown in banking circles, and his luncheon with the mayor! Haviland had a sense of humor; it would make a story too good to keep—the new oil operator, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... 1760 at the age of seventy-six, leaving a grim reputation, which survived for another hundred years in the talk of the countryside. While she lived, her grip on the estate never relaxed. Her son grew up a mere hind upon the home-farm. When he reached twenty-five, she saddled her grey horse, rode over to Looe, ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... change. The city, grim and vast, stretched round me endless. I crawled, a mere atom, within its folds, helpless, insignificant, absurd. The houseless forms that shared my vigil were my fellows. What were we? Animalcule upon its ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... bridge, and Crouch, toiling after her, and with Grip toiling after him, shouts to her to moderate her pace. She looks back, and beholds the grim old house frowning full upon her, and hurries on. Huntsman and dog are left behind for awhile, but the steep ascent soon compels her to slacken speed, and they come up, Crouch swearing lustily, and Grip, with his tongue out of his ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... good influences aboard the Eagle" said the captain with a grim smile. "Only we don't call 'em influences. We call 'em ropes' ends, or cat-o'-nine-tails, or a belaying-pin. I've known a limber rope's end, applied in the right place, do more good to a ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... has two heads Like Janus—calm, benignant, this; That, grim and scowling: his beard spreads From chin to chin" this god has power Immeasurable at every hour: He first taught lovers how to kiss, He brings down sunshine after shower, Thunder and hate are his also, He is YES ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... only remained flight. He saw at last that he had been fighting blindly from the first. He had won a girl whom he did not love—though doubtless her liking was only the most fickle fancy. And she for whom he would have died he had taught to hate him. It was a grim summing up. Donnegan walked the room whistling softly to himself as he checked up ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... the unwilling centre of a group of protesting Granthis and Darwanis, who had each of them his special plan for making the day more interesting, and plucked at the European's sleeve when they were tired of shrieking into his ears. It was with a certain grim pleasure that he received the remonstrances of the Granthis, whose plans must all have been disarranged by his unexpected immobility. Chand Singh's cannon-balls fell as impartially among them as among their fellows, perhaps as a gentle hint that if they were going to ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... Highness to Ned,[1] with that grim face of his, "Why refuse us the Veto, dear Catholic Neddy?" "Because, Sir," said Ned, looking full in his phiz, "You're forbidding ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... radio, so that the British cruisers could have intercepted and destroyed them. Said the Admiral, "Yes, it would have been better, but I would court-martial and shoot the man that did it." He's a wonder to serve under, as grim and strict as a Prussian, but very just, and runs things in a way that secures all our admiration—though we may fuss a bit when, expecting two or three comfortable days in port, we get chased out on short notice into ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... he flinch from that ride with Death, the black captain, as escort, any more than, during the past night, he had flinched under the grip of mortal pain. For some persons the call to endurance brings actual pleasure—of a grim heroic kind. It did so to Charles Verity. And not only this conscious exercise of fortitude, this pride of bearing bodily anguish, but a strange curiosity worked to sustain him. The novelty of the experience, in both cases, excited and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... was seated on a stool by the door of his hut with his rhinoceros-horn-handled axe which was fastened to his right wrist by a thong, leaning against his thigh, and a wolfskin hanging from his broad shoulders. Very grim and fierce he looked thus, with the red light of the sunset playing on him. He greeted me and pointed to another stool on which I sat myself down. Apparently he had been watching ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... Miss Colishaw's," said Candace; and she proceeded to relate what had happened, in a quiet, demure way which was particularly funny, throwing in a little unconscious mimicry which made the scene real to her audience. Miss Colishaw's grim indignation, Mrs. Joy's cool audacity, her own compunctious helplessness,—all were indicated in turn. Before she had done, they were in ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... (Resuming his grim toil.) Well, there's half of it over. But this scherzo is ticklish business. That horrible evening in Prague—will I ever forget it? Those ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... height, at the base of the two towers, a row of gigantic statues representing kings of France. In their hands they hold the sceptre, the sword, the hand of justice, and the globe, and on their heads are antique open crowns with bulging gems. It is superb and grim. You push open the bell-ringer's door, climb the winding staircase, "the screw of St. Giles," to the towers, to the high regions of prayer; you look down and the statues are below you. The row of kings is plunging into the abysm. You hear the ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo |
